


trembled when he laid me out

by maplemood



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Missing Scene, Older Man/Younger Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 08:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20617805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: Mortal girl in question raises her chin. Says, “All right then.”





	trembled when he laid me out

**Author's Note:**

> Just restating what's in the tags--this is canon-era Hades/Eurydice, so consent in this situation is fairly dubious and there's a bit of an edge of sexual coercion to it...that being said, I tried to write this story with the proper weight while keeping it from getting too dark (or making Eurydice a helpless victim without any agency of her own), and hopefully I didn't screw that up too badly.

Cold? Oh, down below it’s cold, all right. Chill of a kind to clamp in and clench fast like the very teeth of the grave; cold and getting no warmer. But see, here’s the thing makes that chill worth bearing. Simple thing, too: Eurydice ain’t hungry anymore. 

Eurydice ain’t of a mind to go hungry ever again and so buttons her coat up tight, rubs the sticky red of pomegranate juice (near purple it was, purple like a wine-dark plum) off her lips, and when Mr. Hades says “Step into my office,” she steps right on past the blazing furnaces whose blazings only hurt her eyes. Eurydice climbs the steps and steps through his doorway, and hears the heavy black door click shut behind her. Squinting, praying the glare off the furnaces ain’t wilted her overmuch, she signs her name away in a neat, even hand. Hand that trembles when she sets the pen down. Just a touch. 

Mr. Hades stands behind his desk, looms over her. Mr. Hades has got a look as carries its weight down to bedrock, and Mr. Hades is looking at her. Rough man for all his finery, is Mr. Hades, a blunt man when needs must, and ain’t he made the price all but crystal clear? Eurydice don’t have no pipeline direct to the gods. (Never was so unlucky as that.) She don’t need one when a god leaves his sunshine wife to sweet talk a mortal girl age or ten his junior; there’s stories that end much the same, up top or down below. 

Mortal girl in question raises her chin. Says, “All right then.”

The god says exactly nothing. Mr. Hades shifts enough that Eurydice can see what sits crouched in the corner nearest his marble-slabbed desk, then shifts enough—by increments he goes, ain’t hesitating but there’s the bedrock weight to him still, slow heft of earthy plates—that she can squeeze past the desk and past him, over to the corner, to a couch padded with patched green velvet. Small thing, rickety. Not at all fine.

Eurydice clears her throat. “Don’t look so sturdy,” she ventures, feeling his look on her back. Truly, she ain’t sure how the couch is supposed to bear up under both their weights together, for all she’s so thin. “Maybe,” she says, for a man like Mr. Hades can’t be resting easy if his bedroom ain’t within easy walking distance of the office, “we oughta take this into bed.”

“You wouldn’t fit in my bed,” he rumbles. She turns then, quarter turn so she can glimpse his face sidelong, see the way that look lances clean through her ribs. “Lose you in the sheets,” says Mr. Hades, more to himself than her. What expression there is on his cragged face don’t change. “On your back, songbird.”

Would’ve been nice, warm, feather-stuffed duvets and springs not bent on jabbing into all her softest parts. Would’ve been a sight better than nice, but hell, man’s got a price worth paying, might as well make it steep. Eurydice unbuttons her coat. She shrugs it off, her vest too, shucks her boots, and lifts her skirt to peel down her raggedy hose. Peels her drawers down while she’s at it, there being no need for romance, as Mr. Hades has already made clear. Down on her back she goes, spreading her legs wide so as to make it easier for him to lower himself between them. 

Her hips creak. Cold air stings against her thighs like a slap. Eurydice shivers, turns her face to the couch’s crushed green back.

_ Clink. _ Leathery rush of a belt pulling free of its loops. “Easy,” she hears, though there’s never a word of his came easy to the ear, not borne on that voice. “You won’t feel a thing.”

Frankly, Eurydice don’t trust Mr. Hades in this matter any farther than she can throw him. Gotta jack her chin all the way up just to look him dead in the eye, after all. Man’s got an earth’s full age of mantle and rocky muscle built up (even if, with his weight settling over her now, Eurydice feels that Mr. Hades is a bit softer in the belly than a man half an earth’s age might be), and all’s she’s got is a gut full of pomegranates. 

(Wine-dark. Wine-dark, split open, dribbling through her fingers, and so many a body is like to never go hungry again.)

But she don’t imagine it’ll hurt too awful-bad, even so. Mr. Hades don’t seem the type to judge his strength by halves. Eurydice breathes in and out slowly. “Go on,” she says, “I ain’t about to break.”

By then, really, the whole thing’s halfway over and done with.

They make quick work of the rest. Mr. Hades does, anyhow—might be her price to pay but it’s his knife to twist. (And she ain’t thinking of his sunshine wife as he plays the lover just long enough to get Eurydice primed and ready, the fit dry and tight but nowhere near as dry and tight as it might’ve been. Eurydice ain’t thinking of Dread Persephone any more than she can help, though she knows Mr. Hades is, feels, somehow, that he can’t think of no one else.) In this all he’s asking for is a willing body. No kissing, no moaning. Eurydice don’t even need to look him proper in the face.

She don’t. She keeps her face turned well away, shivers into the crush of the green velvet, and puts Our Lady of Swift Judgement out of her mind. Puts Orpheus out of her mind too. Orpheus, Eurydice’s own almost-husband, he’s the one with the pipeline direct. From his lips to the gods’ ears, for all the good it’s done him.

Orpheus watching her cow-eyed across the bar floor, all those months and miles ago up top. _ Come home with me. _

Wasn’t much a home, was it. Girl’s gotta follow the money, the glint of warm gold. Girl’s gotta go where the wind don’t bite. Where she’ll get food enough to fill her belly, at least. Build some fat up against that wind.

_ Come home. _ Cow-eyed, he was. Slight as a little calf next to Mr. Hades’ bulk and weight, thinking he could stand between her and a ticket underground all the same. _ Come home. _

If Eurydice turns her head a little and a tear tracks cold down her cheek, if Mr. Hades, breathing heavy, reaches with one calloused hand to thumb it away, if she fumbles to stroke at the razored underside of his cold white head by way of thanks, some kind of comfort due to two people doing what they don’t rightly want to do, what they badly need to do, if—well now. That’s the way of things. Eurydice ain’t asked for it, but that’s the way. 

No helping it. 

Afterwards, once he’s finished, Mr. Hades heaves himself upright with a grunt. No spring chicken, he ain’t, ain’t got a lick of springtime in him. Something—his neck or his back—cracks. Mr. Hades rolls the neck out, his look still trained on her, still bedrock. He reaches down again. Breathing shallow from the pit of her goose-pimpled belly, Eurydice watches the way he palms one of her bosoms through her slip. Not lover-like. Like he’s weighing it in his hand.

“I keep my word, girl.” No _ Hey, little songbird, why don’t you fly south under my wing, _ no pretty yellow puffing canaries. The birds’ve flown the coop, every last one. Just her now, pale and wan under his fingers. “You’ll be fed well.” 

“On pomegranates?”

“Bread, corn. Meat falling off the bone. Pomegranates are hothouse-grown,” says Mr. Hades, flatly ironical like it’s a fact he’s heard over and over again and don’t care for. “They don’t have much flavor to them.”

Eurydice draws her knees together. “This,” she says, “it ain’t but the once. Ain’t but to make a point.” Promise me, she thinks. Promise me your wife won’t burn me up to ashes, promise me this is the last; I ain’t fit for your bed and I ain’t settling for your couch; promise me. 

Hand drops. “Better to forget it now, like you’ll forget the boy. Be easier if you do.”

“All right,” and she nods. “All right,” but she don’t think she will. Forget the ill-wind world above, sure, forget her Orpheus, even—Eurydice ain’t about to forget the price she paid, what she’s weighed out and parceled off. 

Mr. Hades, she thinks, he just might. Seeds will sleep in the earth, his wife will leave and come back, and he’ll put this behind him. Round the wheels goes, and their ain’t no stopping it, nor no telling one turning from the last. Except that this time around, Eurydice’s remembering won’t be addled by an empty belly. Just the cold now. 

“My coat,” she says. Mr. Hades, already on his feet, zipped and buckled and set in stone, bends to pick it up.

And the cold, sure enough, Eurydice can bear.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Flowers."


End file.
